How to Destroy Angels' Mariqueen Maandig performs Wednesday at Pomona's Fox Theater. DAVID HALL, FOR THE REGISTER

Set list: How to Destroy Angels at the Fox Theater

Main set: The Wake-Up / Keep It Together / Parasite / And the Sky Began to Scream / Ice Age / The Believers / How Long? / Welcome Oblivion / BBB / The Space in Between (Sonoio remix) / Fur-Lined / The Loop Closes / A Drowning

Encore: On the Wing / Strings and Attractors / We Fade Away

Mariqueen Maandig (aka Mrs. Trent Reznor) at the Fox Theater. Photo: David Hall, for the Register

If you're one of those dead-set on ending the first Friday of Coachella with either the Stone Roses on the main stage or Tegan and Sara at the Outdoor Theatre, this tidbit out of the Fox Theater in Pomona likely won't sway you.

But after witnessing Wednesday night's world premiere performance from How to Destroy Angels – an industrial-electro project featuring Nine Inch Nails' longtime art director Rob Sheridan and mastermind Trent Reznor, the latter man's wife Mariqueen Maandig and composer/producer Atticus Ross - I'd urge anyone remotely curious about the new outfit to at least stop by the Mojave tent and soak in some of the experience.

Not to fall back on grand clichés, but it bears saying: the 75-minute show, packed with the most jarring cuts from the just-released debut Welcome Oblivion, included a multimedia undertaking the likes few have ever attempted – comparable to what Roger Waters might stage yet tailored to a gothic-electro audience appreciative of surrealism.

Multiple 3D projectors that cast futuristic and ethereal imagery across mobile curtains of white beads – sometimes obstructing the band, other times framing them as they moved along tracks – enhanced complexly glitchy compositions like "The Wake-Up" and "A Drowning," the main set's respective opener and closer.

Surround sound, achieved by extra speakers set up at the room's rear, completed the scheme. What resulted was an extrasensory hypnosis with nuanced analog blips and synth lines that could be unexpectedly calming (as on the serene, stripped-down "Ice Age," sung solely by Maandig) or just the opposite, grinding and nearly overwhelming in combination with Reznor's animal wails and familiarly fiery guitar on "Parasite" and "The Loop Closes."

The set's three-song encore concluded with a cacophony comprising Ross's, Sheridan's and Maandig's synths and effects. Overlaid with Reznor's guitar, his tone altered to resound like a hurricane-strength wind, the noises echoed in and out of the speakers, eventually resolving into a clearly and sweetly delivered final lyric from Maandig: "I can't seem to tell if I am dreaming anymore."

Assuming you're lucky enough to actually worm your way inside Mojave to get the full effect Friday night, those words pretty much sum up the end result.

Trent Reznor (aka Mr. Mariqueen Maandig) at the Fox Theater. Photo: David Hall, for the Register

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